Flares

[Biggles]

Maybe a good place to fire off old flares might be near Military Ranges. they use the same stuff. Your old flares would just be assumed to be squaddies training.

My view is its always a shame to waste anything you've paid good money for and by firing off your old stuff you will at least gain some experience from it.

Now how you manage to do that without alerting everybody is another one.

Personally I reported someone to the Police a few years ago because a para flare was fired in the fields behind my house. I knew what it was straight away when it was fired because of my own experiences. It certainly wasn't a firework. And as such there was no excuse for firing it. The top end of Hampshire is just farming lands and towns for those that don't know. No water and no mountains.

The Police were not one bit interested. (Whats new).

Seems like 5th Novemebr is the best time to fire off any old Pyrotechnics.

God Save any Sailor that gets in trouble on that night. In fact thinking about it Guy Fawkes Night is probably the worst night of the year to go sailing

[Poly]

Originally Posted by Biggles

Maybe a good place to fire off old flares might be near Military Ranges. they use the same stuff. Your old flares would just be assumed to be squaddies training.

not sure thats your best piece of advice ever - given our state of heightened security - you might find yourself explaining why you were carrying an explosive device on or near military land for the next 28 days.

[Biggles]

And the more I think about it. You might even get a helicopter landing on you.

Todays bright idea with regards getting rid of old flares safely is :-

You should be able to go to your nearest RNLI place on one of their training days and fire your old pyro off on a lonely beach in sight of them. Obviously not under direct supervision so as to stop claims. But if anyone reported the flares then it would be easy for the on duty RNLI to corroborate whats going on.
It would also mean that you would get that vital training that is lacking for this sort of thing.

[Poly]

Originally Posted by Biggles

And the more I think about it. You might even get a helicopter landing on you.

Todays bright idea with regards getting rid of old flares safely is :-

You should be able to go to your nearest RNLI place on one of their training days and fire your old pyro off on a lonely beach in sight of them. Obviously not under direct supervision so as to stop claims. But if anyone reported the flares then it would be easy for the on duty RNLI to corroborate whats going on.
It would also mean that you would get that vital training that is lacking for this sort of thing.

Biggles my undestanding and I could be wrong about this - is that this is roughly how the flare demo works... but they won't let you fire red rockets/parachutes as too ambiguous as to the source and they won't want to miss a call out by thinking it was one of biggles... ...of course no reason not to practice with a white rocket/parachute of the same brand as your distress flares. I was flicking through Yachting World at the the airport today (isn't it philanthropic of that company WH Smiths to provide free reference libraries in major public places ) - and they were reviewing flares - they seem to have been practicing/testing whites for this reason - and even then the CG got 10 phone calls reporting the sighting...

[Pablo]

Sorry, i've not read the whole thread but I havn't seen anybody suggesting giving the flares to the fire brigade. Thats what we're supposed to do in France apparently.